


Watch for Me by the Moonlight

by zjofierose



Series: Form Ficlets! [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Character Death, Georgian Period, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Long Hair, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Protective Shiro (Voltron), Purple Prose, Self-Sacrifice, Suicide, Unbeta'd, blatant poetry misuse, no regrets, too many adjectives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-27 23:00:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16711663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose
Summary: self-indulgent twaddle based onthis poem, except i made Shiro a rebel instead of a robber. whatever. i'm not sorry.





	Watch for Me by the Moonlight

“I was wondering if you’d be able to come,” Keith whispers, leaning out from his window. He stretches a long arm down to the strong, handsome man below him.

“They were waiting for me in the pass,” Shiro answers, battle-scarred face warm as he reaches up to touch his fingers to Keith’s. His massive horse shifts impatiently beneath him, and he tugs gently on the reins wrapped around his silver fist. “I had to come around the long way.”

“I’ve missed you,” Keith tells him, his voice fond, and Shiro catches his breath. The man above him remains the most beautiful he’s ever seen in all his life and wanderings: a humble innkeep’s son, made of pale skin and violet eyes, lean muscles and long, long black hair. Their hands brush again, tangling warmly, Keith’s slender digits nestled within Shiro’s own broad palm. Keith pulls away after a endless moment and reluctantly straightens up, his nimble fingers returning to their task. A scarlet ribbon flashes in the moonlight as he deftly weaves it into the section of hair that falls habitually across his right cheek.

The flash of color catches Shiro’s eye, and he recognizes the ribbon all at once as a gift from his last visit, recognizes the shape of the simple betrothal knot blooming under Keith’s fingers, and his face goes radiant with joy. The mark being willingly placed on this man’s person is for  _ him _ ; Keith is his, and his forever - no one shall come between them. Keith catches the direction of his gaze and smiles, soft and slow, his gaze never leaving Shiro’s.

“Come upstairs?” Keith asks softly, his eyes dark and inviting, full of promise and desire. “my father’s still asleep, in spite of all the noise you’ve made. I can hear him snoring from here.”

For a long breath, Shiro considers it. It would not be the first time he would climb to that small room above the stables, would find himself welcomed into loving arms, would lose himself to the pleasures of that narrow bed. He wants it, desperately, but shakes his head finally, the lace at his throat rustling at the gesture. The wintry moon is high and clear, its light glinting off the hilt of his sword, the butt of his gun, the spurs at his boots, but clouds are twisting their ominous way across the sky. He can feel the wind picking up, tugging at the corners of his hat and pressing his coat to his back. 

“My heart, I can’t,” he says with regret, and steels himself against the look of disappointment in his beloved’s eyes. Keith’s face falls into shadow as clouds momentarily cover the moon, his fingers stilling as they finish their task. His expression is forgiving, but Shiro’s heart breaks at disappointing him nonetheless. 

Shiro reaches up again, longing to touch, even briefly. “The storm is coming in quickly, and I have to complete my mission before they catch up with me.” He stands in the stirrups to reach further. “Kiss me quick, for luck,” he says, and Keith presses his lips to his own hand, stretching it down to press his fingers swiftly to Shiro’s.

“When will I see you again?” he asks, and Shiro smiles. 

“I should be back before dawn, if all goes well,” he says, and sees the surprised delight spread across Keith’s face. Their time together is stolen still, though not for much longer, he hopes. The rarity of seeing each other twice in one day is not lost on either of them. “If they catch up with me and I have to flee or lie low, then I might not come till tomorrow night,” he adds, “but I will come for you then, and no Galra will be able to keep me from you.” It’s a vow, and they both know it, the moonlight shining silver and serious off Keith’s face. “Watch for me by the moonlight,” he says, and Keith nods in agreement, his fingers lingering against Shiro’s own. 

Keith pulls back suddenly, and Shiro wonders if he’s heard a sound, but then Keith’s back, leaning out as far as he can across the windowsill, fingers scrabbling at the wood for grip as he drops his head. His hair, thick, dark, wavy, and loosed from the ties that normally bind it back and out of the way, comes tumbling down into Shiro’s arms where he stands in the stirrups. Long enough to reach Keith’s knees, it surrounds Shiro like a cloud, carrying the warmth and scent of his beloved. He buries his hands in it, careful not to pull Keith from his precarious perch, and drags it across his face, breathing deeply. He can catch the smell of the perfumed oil that Keith applies after he washes it, the smoke from the inn’s cookfires, the faint scent of hay from the barns. It’s a tent of comfort, a blanket of hope and love. He draws one last, deep breath and presses it to his lips before urging his horse to step back, bringing his face into the open air again. 

Keith straightens, his hair blowing lightly in the wind, his eyes serious. 

“I’ll keep watch for you.”

“I’ll come for you,” Shiro vows, “I’ll  _ always  _ come for you.”

Keith nods. “I know,” he whispers, his voice scarcely audible, “I know.”

It’s the hardest thing Shiro’s ever done each time he has to leave, turning his horse away from his heart and taking to the road. He knows that Keith will wait in the window until he’s gone from sight and sound, the faint echoes of Black’s hoofbeats long faded into the night. 

He doesn’t look back. He never looks back.

\--

Shiro isn’t back by dawn, but Keith is not surprised. It’d been a lovely thought, but the reality is that the Galra have made it harder and harder for him to move around lately. Shiro and the other rebel fighters have been making too much trouble, and the soldiers are on the hunt for them all the time. 

Shiro still hasn’t arrived by noon, but Keith goes about his business, changing the empty rooms over for newcomers, helping to cook and serve the afternoon meal. His father has been working on some repairs to the roof while the late fall weather holds, so Keith is in charge of making sure the guests are managed and settled, housed and fed. He forces himself to focus on his work, trying not to let his heart pound every time he hears approaching hoofbeats on the road.

The Galra troop arrives at sunset, and the moment Keith sees the ostler Lotor’s smug face as he greets the soldiers, he knows with a freezing seize to his gut what’s happened. They weren’t careful enough; they were overheard, and Lotor has sold them out for a pretty reward. Lotor turns to him then, his face wide in a vicious smile as he strides across the room with the aim of claiming his prize. He doesn’t count on the knife that Keith keeps hidden behind the bar, however, and goes down fast, red blooming across his neck and down his shirt front as his unseeing eyes stare at the ceiling. 

Keith fights hard, but there are just too many of them. They beat him viciously and strip him, kissing and fondling him after they’ve trussed him up, blood streaming from his nose, an eye purpling over fast and ribs that stab when he breathes. They shift his bed to the center of his room so that the foot of it faces the window and tie him to it at attention, strapping a musket to his side and angling it so that the muzzle rests at the dip of his ribs.

“Keep watch with us,” they jeer, two of them settling below his window with their guns loaded and ready. His window affords the best view of the road out of all the inn, and Keith can see it now, winding purple and slow over the darkening hills.

“ _ Watch for me by the moonlight, _ ” he hears Shiro whisper, and despairs.

\--

Night falls, and Keith’s fear increases to a thing that chokes him where he stands. It’s not inconceivable that Shiro could have been warned, that someone sympathetic could have seen the Galra approach and sent word. But it’s a small chance, Keith knows, and so he works at the knots binding him with a single-minded determination. 

There’s very little give to the ropes, and Keith loses two fingernails to trying to pry them free. He stifles the sounds of pain in his pressed lips, knowing that he is fighting against the continuous slide of time and that he has none at all to lose. His fingers grow slick with sweat and blood, his thumb pulls out of joint, but finally, finally as the moon floats high in the sky, he gets a finger on the trigger. 

_ At last _ , he thinks, then,  _ Shiro _ .

It will only work if Shiro is close enough to hear the report of the gun, Keith knows this, and so he waits, hoping against hope that Shiro is gone, disappeared into the hills and hiding, waiting out the ambush. They have their whole lives ahead of them, and Keith has never wanted to die. Still, he will do anything to save the man he loves, without question, without hesitation. 

Finally it comes, and his ears prick to the sound of hooves in the distance. There’s a finality that settles into his heart at the noise; it could never, he thinks, have been any other way. The soldiers have yet to hear it, and as much as Keith wants to believe that it’s any other horse, he’d know Black’s gait anywhere. He has only seconds to set off his warning before the soldiers notice the sound of Shiro coming nearer and nearer, so he hauls himself up straight and tall, pulling a deep breath in. He takes one last look out at the moonlit road.

“Shiro,” he whispers soundlessly, “I love you.”

His finger on the trigger is sure.

\--

The sound of a musket shot shatters the darkness, and Shiro turns on instinct, galloping Black back the way he came. The Galra must be waiting for him, so he flees into the night, riding like demons from hell itself are on his trail.

Dawn rises with no evidence of further pursuit, so he guides his horse to a safehouse he knows just off the road. He accepts their offer of a rest and breakfast gratefully, grooming Black and feeding him before taking his own repast at the kitchen table with the elderly couple who welcomed him.

It’s not till the goodwife mentions it that the thought even occurs to him of the shot having been a warning, rather than a miscue from the Galra themselves. He stills, a piece of bread halfway to his mouth as she nods sagely and settles in to relate the freshest gossip. 

“Twas the ostler who turned you in, sir,” she says, “and the innkeep’s boy killed him for it, right there in the hall.” She tuts, but Shiro smiles, thinking of his Keith’s ferocity. “Put up a good fight, too, by all accounts but there were too many of them in the end.” Her face pulls in disappointment, and she lays a hand over his. “You should be very proud of his loyalty to the cause,” she says gravely, and Shiro feels his heart freeze in his chest. Time stops as he waits for her to continue, the scent of Keith’s hair caught in his nose, Keith’s voice ringing in his ears. “The Galra tied him up with a gun to his chest so’s he wouldn’t try to escape, but they say he got loose enough to pull the trigger, just to warn you.”

There are no words that can come out of his mouth, no breath that lifts his chest as he sees it, suddenly, vividly in his mind’s eye. Keith in his room, his beautiful eyes staring out, watching for Shiro to return to him. Keith, his long hair wrapped around a weapon that caresses him so intimately it may as well have been set there by Shiro himself. Keith, his beautiful head bowed, blood running down his limp form.

He’s standing and striding to the door before she can do more than startle. His blood roars in his ears as he grabs Black’s reins and vaults into the saddle, turning for the road and galloping hard. 

“I’m coming for you, Keith,” he chokes into the wind that whips past his face, Black’s hooves striking clouds of dust as he flies over the hills, “I’ll  _ always  _ come for you.”

\--

He falls upon the Galra soldiers like an avenging angel, his rapier laying waste to a dozen of them before they can even coordinate a response to his presence. His eyes flash and fury blazes from his face, tears streaming down his cheeks as he screams curses upon them, his arm striking like lightning as the sun shines off his silver hand and steel blade. 

The first shot doesn’t even slow him, but there are only so many Galra he can kill before at least a few of them come to their senses and regroup. After that, the shots come close together, and he slides from his horse’s back to strike down another soldier even as he falls to the dirt of the road, dust and blood ruining his fine velvet coat and staining the lace at his throat. 

The last thing he sees is the small window above the stables, staring out over the road. As his breath leaves him, a scent fills his mouth of perfume and smoke, hay and sunshine. A gentle voice whispers in his ear.

_ “I watched for you by the moonlight.” _

\--

Late in the winter, as the moon hangs low in the sky, a man riding a dark horse gallops joyfully into the courtyard of an old, abandoned inn. His horse shifts restlessly as he pulls up beneath a lone window and whistles a cheerful tune.

The window opens, and a young man leans out, his eyes bright and his long hair streaming in the wind, a flash of crimson catching the moonlight as it ripples in the dark. 

“ _ Come up _ ,” he says to the man on horseback, reaching down as far as he can to take him by the hand. “ _ I’ve been waiting so long. _ ”

The man on the horse takes the offered grip, his face radiant, and begins to climb.


End file.
